Nina now started the car's engine and, not even slowing at a single stop sign or red light, sped through the quaint, quiet burg of Cranston, Missouri, then skidded onto the expressway, hurrying south toward where she believed John Pellam would be.

TWENTY-THREE

Being a lawyer, he was used to rewriting.

Ronald Peterson never signed off on a letter, interrogatory, complaint, motion, or brief without hours of revision. But the two-page press release describing Peter Crimmins s indictment for the murder of Vince Gaudia had taken more time, per word, than anything that Peterson had written in years.

He had just learned, however, that this was one press release that was not going to be released to anyone.

"He changed his mind?" Peterson whispered, barely controlling his fury.

"That's what the message said," Nelson explained cautiously, looking away from his boss's enraged eyes. "And there's no answer at his phone, the phone in his camper. I sent an agent to Maddox. The camper's not in the trailer park. Somebody in one of the vans said Pellam'd been fired and they don't know where he is."

"Think Crimmins got him?"

"Well, according to the receptionist, he didn't sound coerced."

"Why the fuck didn't she put through the call? She's fired. She's out of here."

Nelson said delicately, "He didn't want to speak to you. He wanted to just leave a message."

"What exactly did it say again?"

"Just that he'd changed his mind. That was it."

Peterson clicked a fingernail and thumbnail together seven times. "Any hint from the taps on Crimmins?"

"Nothing useful. Business as usual. We can take that one of two ways. Either he's using a safe phone to talk to his muscle.

Or he heard the press conference and for some reason he's not concerned about the guy testifying."

Why wouldn't he be concerned?

One reason: He wasn't the man in the Lincoln after all.

"Why," Nelson pondered, "would Pellam be jerking our leash like this?"

Peterson had told no one about the freelance FBI agent who had gone after Pellam's girlfriend and then Pellam himself to

"help" Pellam remember about Crimmins and vanished shortly afterward. Nor did Nelson know that there was nothing whatsoever wrong with Tony Sloan's federal firearm notices. Nelson therefore didn't know that Pellam had some very good motives for jerking leashes. "Cold feet, I suspect," the U.S. Attorney suggested.

"What about the first option? That Crimmins got to him?"

Peterson shook his head. "Even Crimmins wouldn't be that stupid. Hell. The press'll play it like we've got hairy palms."

"What do you want to do?" Nelson gazed down at the press release.

"What's your assessment of the case against Crimmins without Pellam's testimony? I'm speaking of the Gaudia hit."

Nelson thought for a minute. Peterson made a cats cradle with a rubber band and studied his protege, whose squinting eyes and pursed lips only partially revealed the lavish anxiety he felt. "I'd say probable cause if we want to arrest him. But we won't get an indictment." Nelson cleared his throat.

"And the original indictment, the RICO charges, without Gaudia's testimony?"

He said, "Acquittal. Sixty-forty." Nelson's grimace was the equivalent of hunkering down in a bunker before a bomb detonated.

But Petersons sole reaction was to press his teeth together. His breath hissed out from between them and then he chewed on his tongue in rapt contemplation. He slowly concluded that there was as much danger for him in the Crimmins case as there was potential to score one for the good guys.

It was time for the whole thing to go away.

He told this to Nelson and added, "Call Crimmins's lawyer. See if we can plead him away for a few years."

Nelson quickly responded, "Will do," and noted coolly that this order was tantamount to scuttling two years of work.

"What about Pellam? There's still somebody out there looking to hurt him. Should we get Bracken or Monroe on it? I mean, the guy could be in trouble."

Peterson wound up a toy Donald Duck, which walked for ten inches, hit an indictment, then marched in place until the spring wound down. "It's Pellam's problem now. He's on his own."

She drove quickly, racing along Main Street in Maddox, past the empty storefronts, the darkened real estate brokerages, the Goodwill Store. The car spun up a wake of bleached, dull leaves.

Nina had driven from Cranston to the Federal Building in St. Louis. She hadn't been able to find Pellam though his camper had been parked in a lot across the street. It had been empty. Where, she wondered, had he gone? She paced in panic up and down the sidewalk. She suddenly believed she knew. She had leapt into the car and sped back to Maddox.

Now, driving along deserted Main Street, she was not so sure she had guessed correctly. The emptiness seemed to laugh at her. Where the hell is he?

As she skidded around a curve beside abandoned grain elevators, images jumbled in her mind. Pellam standing in the field beside the brown Missouri, aiming his Polaroid. Nina herself applying makeup to a petite blond actress wearing a yellow sundress riddled with bullet holes. Pellam lying in bed next to Nina herself. The huge kick of the Colt automatic that jarred her arm from wrist to shoulder every time she fired it.

"You know something?" Ralph Bales asked the question in a normal volume, though it echoed loudly through the empty factory. He looked around quickly, startled by the sound of his own words returning.

The beer man did not apparently want to know anything. Ralph Bales continued, "I don't even know your name."

Introductions were not, however, made. The man prodded him farther inside with the barrel of the cowboy gun.

Despite the muzzle at his back, though, Ralph Bales did not feel in danger. Maybe it was how the man was holding the gun-without desperation, more like a bottle of beer than a weapon. Maybe it was his eyes, which were no longer as eerily serene as they had been. They seemed more purposeful, as if the man just wanted to talk.

In the rear of the warehouse was a small cul-de-sac beneath a balcony. It was very dark here, lit only by indirect light filtering in from the huge arched windows, covered with grime and dust. The floor was dusty, too, but much of that had been disturbed by footprints. Directly in front of a Bee Gees poster was a wood-and-canvas director's chair.

Ralph Bales stopped. The beer man motioned him forward to the chair. "Sit down."

He sat. "This place is pretty nifty. You shooting your film here?"

"Put these on each wrist." The man handed him two pairs of handcuffs. "Right first, then hook it to the arm."

"Kinky." Ralph Bales looked at them closely. Property of Maddox Pol. Dept. was stamped on the side. "Where'd you get these?"

"Put them on."

Ralph Bales relaxed further. A guy like this, an amateur, was definitely not going to hurt a man handcuffed to a chair. He clicked one pair of cuffs on his right wrist then to the chair. Then he locked the other cuff to his left wrist. The beer man stepped forward slowly and, with a ratcheting sound, hooked the remaining cuff to the other arm of the chair.

He stepped back like a carpenter surveying a good flooring job. He pulled the Colt out of his belt. "Now. Who was in the Lincoln?"

So he had a tape recorder hidden somewhere, trying to get a confession. "What Lincoln would that be?"

"Who was it?"

"Okay," Ralph Bales said with amused frustration. "This is some kind of bullshit."